[etni] bookless beginning year activities - simple poems

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Greeeting colleagues, 

 

I liked the poem Judy Freedman sent in, and have also been thinking about using 
poems.

 

I'm thinking particularly of  my weakish 7th and 8th grade classes, and 1 point 
class in high school, who will as yet most probably have no books ? and of 
course there are budgetary restrictions  on supplying pages of duplicated 
materials.

 

So I have decided to try some poems in simple language, using the blackboard.

 

Here they are.

 

 

 

                     I

(Theme: A slightly tongue in cheek look at how we feel about school and why we 
should be most happy to be back.)

 

 

BACK TO SCHOOL

By Ben Sommer

 

We?re back in school. 

Oh what fun!

Here we are,

everyone.

 

We sit here

in class again,

nice young women

and nice young men.

 

We want to learn.

We want to know.

Teacher help us

learn and grow.

 

We want to sit

and learn all day.

We do not want 

to go away.

 

We had too much holiday.

We want to come to school and stay!

 

Give us homework!

A quiz! A test!

These are the things

that we like best!

We do not want 

to stop and rest!

 

We lazed for 8 weeks,

now we say!

Enough, enough

of holiday!!

 

 

 

II

Theme: Our minds range far afield when we are asleep. Where do we go? There are 
the dreams when we feel we are flying and soaring over all, dreams when we go 
over past incidents and revisit old friends and dreams when we meet famous 
people?. sometimes we remember bits of these, but often not. This may be 
elicited from the students in discussion prior to the presentation of the poem.

 

I would do this longish poem in two halves.   

 

 NIGHT TRAVELS

by Ben Sommer

 

Who knows,

who knows

just where we go

when we go

to sleep?

Our bodies are here,

That is clear,

But do we just count sheep?

 

Or are we in

some strange, far place?

Do we meet dragons 

face to face,

or maybe fly 

past purple seas,

or great red fires,

or great green trees?

 

Yes, while our bodies

lie in beds,

are we there

inside our heads?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do we fight

old fights again

with teachers, parents,

scary men,

with brothers, sisters,

old girlfriends?

 

Do we fight monsters,

remember school,

or funny times

we played the fool?

Do we remember 

friends from our past

who we see

in dreams at last?

 

Or do we talk

with movie stars

and dance with them

at pools, or bars,

or drive around

in big, fast cars?

 

When we sleep

we fly away.

Where do we go?

Who can say?

 

 

 

These poems provide short simple sentences, broken up visually to fit into the 
stanzas. Hopefully they will enable vocabulary, and grammar, revision, 
discussion, oral practice, repeated readings of the text and writing practice. 

 

I plan to first go over the vocabulary. Then  I will write a verse on the 
board, and read it out.  Next I?ll  invite volunteers to have a go at reading 
it out loud, and follow this with some discussion of the meaning -  and so on 
with the rest of the verses.

 

Once the whole poem is on the board  I will rub out the selected vocabulary 
words (remember we have already gone over vocabulary so they will have these 
items listed in their notebooks).  

 

I will then ask them to copy the poems into their notebooks and complete the 
missing words.

 

Once this is done we can go over the answers, thus reading the text yet again?

 

Homework can be learning the words, learning a verse off by heart and so forth. 

 

Better students could prepare two sentences of opinion about the poem,(or 
perhaps add two lines or a verse.)

 

 If you use these in class, I would be most interested to know what you did and 
how they went.

 

Ben Sommer

 


 

 

                
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